Signals are received from a playout room, studio or other facility and are transmitted over fibre on a DTM platform to Tata Communications' nearest Video Connect Point-of-Presence (PoP) for seamless delivery. Video Connect offers an uptime equivalent to satellite by having an auto rerouting feature between Pacific and Atlantic routes in the undersea cable system for international connectivity.

With connections to the main media hubs and teleports of the world, including DIRECTV, DISH Network, RRsat, GlobeCast, auto rerouting worldwide and 24x7x365 connectivity, premium video reaches its intended destination irrespective of fibre cuts or outages. Video Connect's on-demand and customisation capabilities also allow broadcasters to activate the service for special broadcasts and enable different feeds to be used for different time zones so that revenue streams can be created from local advertising.

Content Transformation is a managed transcode service that is aimed at the requirements of content creators that produce content for global broadcast audiences. The service is enabled by Tata Communications' global network and hosted in our data centre infrastructure. This service offers content creators, service providers and media professionals an integrated end-to-end workflow for moving content files to the managed cloud environment and transcoding them into broadcast quality formats ready for immediate delivery and transmission globally. This drastically reduces the delivery time compared with traditional solutions that rely on the physical transport of media. The service incorporates Content Flow which is our solution for accelerated movement of large files.

Viacom18, a joint venture between Viacom Inc. and the Network18 Group, is currently using this content transformation service for the daily transcoding and delivery of HD Masters of leading Indian soap programmes to its customers in Pakistan for same-day syndicated play-out. Previously, Viacom18's customers had to broadcast content from previous soap seasons, leaving a gap where some viewers could only obtain content from unauthorised sources to stay up-to-date with their favourite TV shows. Same-day distribution of play-out eliminates this problem, and maximises the value of the content for the broadcaster. In addition, this increases the value of the rights owned by Viacom18, allowing it to maximise the revenue generated from each show.

Tata Communications Media Services intends to continue to evolve its service portfolio with the launch of 3 new offerings in up-coming months:

o A media optimised content storage platform which will focus specifically on providing storage for metadata rich video storage both as an Overflow as well as Disaster Recovery solution